Mother And Son aren’t a thing of obvious beauty – unless, of course, you acquaint spooks and spectres with roses and rhododendrons – but it’s brilliant, nonetheless.
Beauty, it’s said, is in the eye of the beholder. Typically, beauty is said to be characterised by colour, shape and light. Scientists have sought to analyse the common attributes of classical images of beauty – from the Mona Lisa to the Taj Mahal, through to the latest Loreal model – and Robert Pirsig, author of Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance, went to the edge of insanity and back again in his philosophical quest to find the objective elements that comprise quality, and its most beautiful manifestations. Eventually, the analysis leads to a point of unavoidable subjectivity – we all see beauty in different forms, for different cognitive and cultural reasons.
Mother And Son aren’t a thing of obvious beauty – unless, of course, you acquaint spooks and spectres with roses and rhododendrons – but it’s brilliant, nonetheless. You hear it within the opening moments of Mosquito: a glorious garage riff plucked from a polluted estuary deep in the Texan hinterland that builds slowly into an amphetamine-fuelled frenzy before miraculously mutating into Dengue Fever’s southern blues licks and sticks, its hand firmly around your nether regions before you’ve had a chance to blush.
Dead Yellow Moon is a stomping soundtrack for a night at a Tacoma high school dance curated by the Merry Pranksters, The Hanging Tree takes Nick Cave’s The Weeping Song and shoves it head first into a festering psychedelic sewer and the murderous narrative of Creature From The Swamp projects B-grade cinema through the disturbed eyes of Jeffrey Lee Pierce.
On Savage, the sounds of nature at its most disconcerting give way to a surf-infused Cramps-like riff that slides up your inner thigh with moral corruption as its quest; It Won’t Be Long finds Chuck Berry loitering down on the beaches of southern California, eager to show a crowd of clean-cut middle-class kids just what rock ’n’ roll is all about, and Surfswing offers a glimpse into the swaggering and sleazy side of Dick Dale.
And then Mother And Son really get down into the dirt: Redcoats is a freakish seven-minute journey into psychological oblivion, Bodie Jarman’s vocals a picture of pain and absolute desperation, and Johnny Boy tells the compelling story of a kid lost to a world of temptation and moral indifference. With human morality already exposed for the wafer-thin conceit it may always be, Closing Theme leads the listener into sonic territory that’s as stark as it’s compelling.
There are moments throughout this album when it’s implausible to believe it was made by a couple of kids barely out of their teenage years. The fact that it was adds another layer to an already superb record. Get thee to an industrial-strength swamp.
If you like these, you’ll like this: 13th Floor Elevators, Psychedelic Sounds Of The 13th Floor Elevators, Gun Club, Fire Of Love.
GLENN BISHOP
